


Five Things That Never Happened To Matthew Albie and Daniel Tripp in Hollywood, CA

by yuletidefairy



Category: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M, Multi, Yuletide 2007, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:44:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletidefairy/pseuds/yuletidefairy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And you do not fuck the talent, but writers are fair game?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things That Never Happened To Matthew Albie and Daniel Tripp in Hollywood, CA

**Author's Note:**

  * For [niqaeli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/niqaeli/gifts).



**I. The Substitution**

Danny died of a drug overdose at 5:09 on a Wednesday morning in 1995. The paramedics called it in the living room of Matt's apartment and Matt had to throw up in the kitchen sink.

It was the most traumatic thing that had ever happened to Matt, so he wrote a screenplay about it. He shopped it around like he would have any other screenplay, and was a little surprised when the _Lifetime_ channel expressed interest in it, three years after the fact.

"The thing is," said the executive he spoke to, a woman with a husky voice, "for it to air with us, it really needs to focus on women. So if you could do it about a couple of dykes instead of a couple of fags..."

"Sure," said Matt, because he could still imagine the crinkle around Danny's eyes as he tried not to laugh at being remembered for all eternity as a _Lifetime_ lesbian.

Matt did a search and replace on the names, so it became about Dani-short-for-Danielle and Maddy-short-for-Madeleine. He wrote in a secondary theme about how hard it was for women to break into the boys' club that was Hollywood and patted himself on the back for being a sensitive prick. It worked out well because he had to cut the entire subplot about Danny's infidelity. "The people I fuck when I'm high don't mean anything," Danny had always told him, but it read a hell of a lot more like date rape when it was a strung-out _chick_ getting fucked all over town. Then he changed all the blowjob jokes to eating out, even though he knew neither would make it past _Lifetime_ 's censors.

Then Matt talked his way into directing the thing, because some details he was willing to sacrifice to sell a script, and others were set in stone. Dani, for instance, had to be a blonde with brown eyes. "Don't cast them pretty, they're not actresses, they're a writer-producer team," he said, but of course they cast them pretty. They found him someone with blonde hair and brown eyes to play Dani, though, so he went with it.

Her name was Harriet Hayes, and Matt fell for her on the spot. He fucked her in her trailer long after she was cast to try to convince himself he was less of a slimeball than he was, and told her afterward that Danny, the real Dani, had been his lover. "I'm sorry," said Harriet, and gave him an astonishingly good performance out of pity. She'd been a waitress before she walked into the casting studio, so Matt consoled himself that anything that kept him from giving her outright line readings counted as good directorial skills.

Nobody saw it, of course, because it was a _Lifetime_ movie with an unknown lead actress, but Matt kept a tape of it, because it was a better memorial for Danny than anything else he could have done.

**II. The Quickie Divorce**

Matt never met Danny's second wife, because he married her during the period Matt had sworn up and down that he was not talking to Danny until Danny was sober. He still talked to Danny, but usually only on the phone. Sometimes Danny called him, and Matt always asked, "Are you high?" and Danny always said no, but it was always a lie. Sometimes Matt called Danny and asked, "Are you still alive?" and Danny would say, "Uh, I think so, let me get back to you on that," and Matt was never sure if Danny was trying to make him laugh or trying to express how fucked up he was.

Danny divorced wife number two around the time he started attending Narcotics Anonymous regularly, so Matt managed to get the mistaken impression that she was a drug addict, too. "No," Danny told him, laughing, over coffee. "She was perky enough without having to take anything. Just too damn perky for me to handle without the aid of chemicals."

"I'm sorry?" Matt offered.

"I'm not," Danny said. "She didn't know I was using until I went into rehab. She got pissed I didn't tell her."

"That sucks," Matt said, wondering how Danny had managed to hide it. Or was she just stupid? "How did you meet her?"

"She's an aspiring actress," Danny said. "I met her at a party."

"Aspiring," said Matt. "So she hasn't been in anything I've seen. Unless she's done porn?"

Danny laughed at that. "I very much doubt it."

"What's her name?" Matt asked.

"Not important," said Danny.

"What, are you afraid I'm going to go stalk her?" Matt asked.

"Yes, because she's _so_ your type," Danny said. "Give it a rest, all right?"

"All right," said Matt. There were some things they didn't talk about: the fact that Matt heard voices when he was writing (Danny said, "Shut up and write, I don't want to know"), what Danny said and did at meetings, things their parents thought of each other for $4000, Alex. Matt just put Danny's second wife on the list, because what Danny didn't want to say, Danny didn't say.

Years later, Matt knew Danny and Harriet's interactions ranged from cool to tolerant, but he never connected the dots.

**III. The Claim**

Danny caught Matt flirting with Harriet Hayes two days after she arrived. Danny's response was to grab Matt's arm and physically remove him from said flirtation. Harriet was squawking about lunatics and should she call security and Matt had to say, "No, it's all right! He's a friend, don't worry."

Then Danny backed him into the green room and locked the door behind them. Matt started to freak out a little.

"You do not," Danny said, pushing Matt down on one of the couches, "fuck the talent."

Danny was unzipping Matt's fly, and Matt had to ask, "What the hell?"

"It never ends well," Danny told him, just before he went down on him.

About twenty seconds later, Cal came on the Voice of God mic and announced, "I can see you, you dipshits!"

Matt was ashamed of what _that_ little burst of adrenaline did to his responses. He tried to push Danny's head away, but Danny just sucked him harder and waved a thumbs-up at the camera on the ceiling.

"Damn it, Danny," Matt said, or rather gasped.

The Voice of God mic crackled again. "I'm sending security in!" Cal yelled.

But Danny managed to finish Matt off before security got in (and fuck, fuck, getting caught? Hearing that door rattling? Matt hadn't know he _had_ that kink), so they were just standing there, flushed and sweaty and guilty-looking (in Matt's case) and triumphant (in Danny's) when the door swung open. "Cal asked me to bring you gentlemen upstairs," said the security guy in the most ominous, deepest voice Matt had ever heard outside of a blaxploitation movie, tapping a nightstick on his palm, and that thing _had_ to be a prop, didn't it?

In the control booth, Danny leaned on a bank of monitors and said, "Come on, Cal, a lot more horrifying celebrities have done a lot more horrifying things that _that_ in the green room."

"You're not celebrities," Cal snapped, rolling his chair over to hold out a box of tissues for Danny. Danny accepted one and wiped his mouth fastidiously. "And you do not fuck the talent, but writers are fair game?" Cal asked.

"Hello, I'm right here," Matt pointed out.

"There's no way I'm gonna be able to keep this under wraps," Cal warned them. "Too many people saw the monitor."

Danny just smirked and dropped his tissue in the wastepaper basket.

"You fucking asshole," said Matt. "That was the fucking _point_ , wasn't it?"

"Will you two go fight somewhere else?" Cal said. "If you do it here, I'll be constantly afraid of the moment when you decide to kiss and make up."

"Fine," Matt said, stalking out.

"Matty, wait," Danny said, catching him by the shoulder in the hall. He kissed Matt, two feet away from the writer's room door, with Ricky and Ron and Tom and why, yes, that was Harriet, all watching, and Matt let him.

"It's like a soap opera," said Ricky.

"Do you think we can do a sketch?" Ron asked.

"If anyone's turning my life into a sketch," Matt yelled, "it's damn well going to be me!"

**IV. The Second Movie**

The script Matt was working on was an ensemble caper thing with a woman ringleading the job, because his main complaint about _Ocean's 11_ was how it was eleven guys and one love interest, and that there was so much more sharp dialogue to be had in mixed company. On-the-job innuendo, that kind of thing. Danny could tell perfectly well that Matt had written the ringleader for Harriet, even though Danny thought they might be able to swing Angelina Jolie if the studio got interested enough. Harriet could be the hot hacker, Danny thought, if she had to be anyone at all.

Then Harriet broke up with Matt by email, and between that and the problems he was having with the second act, Matt pitched his monitor out the window and completely fucked up his back.

Danny drove him to the hospital, got him checked in, then went to a meeting at Fox and got high with the greenlight guy. He didn't really think it'd get Matt's script greenlit, but he didn't really care. Danny was in a self-destructive mood.

When Danny went back to the hospital, they'd operated on Matt, and Matt was awake, just barely, but higher than Danny. "Fuck Harriet," he said. "Fuck Harriet and her little dog, too. You go get Angelina Jolie. We don't need fucking Harriet."

"You mean that?" Danny asked. "You really mean that?"

"I'm _done_ ," said Matt, waving his arm in a way that probably wasn't good for him. "I am done with all her pious, patriotic bullshit. This is it. I'm finished with her."

"Until next time," Danny said, because there was always a next time.

"Nope," said Matt. "Fuck her. She can do whatever the hell she wants, I don't care anymore."

Danny pulled out his cell phone, doubtless in violation of hospital rules. He did not call the greenlight guy at Fox. He did not call Angelina Jolie's agent. He did, however, call the insurance company and push his physical back a week. "My partner's just had emergency surgery, now's not a good time for me to come in," he said.

"You just went to a meeting at the studio," Matt pointed out. "While I was in emergency surgery."

"Hush," said Danny. In a week, cocaine wouldn't show up on the drug test.

In a week, when Wes Mendell went off his nut, Jordan McDeere tried to make Danny an offer, and Danny said, "Fuck you, lady," because hell if he was putting Matt back into Harriet's hands when they'd just been greenlit for a Harriet-free ensemble caper flick, and Angelina Jolie's agent had promised to get back to them.

**V. The Outing**

"Oh, look, we've been linked by our late-night Denny's runs again," Matt said, flicking the tabloids in the check-out line.

It was one-and-a-half-inch black-and-white photo on the corner of a newsprint cover taken up primarily by Bat-Boy. They were getting to be names in Hollywood, but they weren't faces--half the of height was taken up by a headline explaining that they were the _Studio 60_ executives, because otherwise no one would have known who they were.

Danny cruised the cart into the lane and set the pickle jar and the tub of ice cream (mint chocolate chip) on the conveyor belt. "Get one for her. She likes to keep on the trash," he said.

"What, you don't keep Jordan from reading her reviews like me?" Matt asked.

"She's not a fragile flower like you," Danny said, looking at Matt over his glasses.

And then Matt noticed the US Weekly next to the tabloids. The one that had a full-color glossy cover photo of Jordan in a sundress with a hand on her big round belly, and the caption, "Still a Party Girl? Jordan McDeere Doesn't Know Who Her Baby's Father Is."

"Shit," said Matt.

"If she hasn't seen it already, she will," said Danny. "Leave it."

Except that when they got back to Jordan's, Danny did tell her, like a penitent schoolboy. Jordan munched on a pickle and said, "You know, this doesn't go with ice cream nearly as well as the movies would make you think."

"Well, it's entirely possible all the movies are written by men, who've never actually been pregnant," Matt suggested.

Jordan gave Matt a speculative look and said, "I have an idea."

"Does it involve going out to the grocery store again?" Matt complained. "Because apparently the paparazzi are stalking us."

"No," Jordan said. "An idea about the US Weekly story."

Which was why, two days later, Harriet blasted into Matt's office demanding, "Why does Rolling Stone want to interview me about my boyfriend sleeping with the president of the network?"

"Ex-boyfriend at the moment," Matt said, "isn't it? And that would be Jordan's fault. And possibly Danny's. He encouraged her."

"To sleep with you?" Harriet asked incredulously.

"No," Matt said patiently. "To be a pain in the ass and make a media circus and turn the rumors about her baby upside down by suggesting she didn't know who the baby's father was because she's sleeping with both of us."

"But she does know who the baby's father is," Harriet said. "It's that asshole at Danny's insurance company."

"And doesn't that sound sleazy?" Matt said. "Apparently she'd rather everyone talk about her threesomes with her employees instead."

Danny poked his head in to say, "Are you coming? The shoot's in forty minutes."

"Do I have to?" Matt said.

"If you want to keep your job," Danny said, and ducked back out.

"I'm coming with you," Harriet declared.

Matt couldn't shake her off, so the next thing he knew, the supposedly tasteful planned photo spread with Matt and Danny in suits and Jordan half naked ("Who do you think you are, Demi Moore?" Matt had asked) turned into some bizarre thing with Jordan and Harriet embracing after a huge yelling match while Matt and Danny watched uncomfortably, shoulder to shoulder, looking like creepy lesbian-obsessed voyeurs. The magazine refused to be talked out of using it, because Harriet _was_ a face and would sell better than any of them.

The title of the article was, "Who Needs The Big Three When You Can Do The Big Four?"


End file.
